Cataclysm Post Mortem -- Dungeons and Raids with Scott “Daelo” Mercer

Soon we fly together again...

We received the following pics from Blizzard this morning, with this cryptic message: "Soon we fly together again..."

Any idea what it could mean? We're curious to know more about these mounts!

Cataclysm Post Mortem: Dungeons and Raids

As a part of our post mortem series on Cataclysm, we sat down with World of Warcraft Lead Encounter Designer Scott “Daelo” Mercer to hear his thoughts on Cataclysm dungeons and raids.

Q. What were your main goals going into Cataclysm?We really wanted to make sure we were creating new challenges, strong mechanics, and cool creatures while staying true to the expansion and the themes we wanted to carry out. The three raid dungeons came out well and we had a lot of fun bringing the story of Nefarian and the Twilight’s Hammer to life. We were also able to add some dynamic mechanics in Throne of the Four Winds, which featured players moving across multiple platforms.

How did this evolve over the various content patches?Zul’Gurub and Zul’Aman were entertaining raids with diverse mechanics, and they translated well when we converted them into Heroic dungeons for patch 4.1. Interesting mechanics and features that once were restricted to raids are now finding their way into our five-player dungeons.

Adding the Dungeon Journal in patch 4.2 was also a major step forward. We wanted to be able to share more information in the game so that players wouldn’t feel the need to go look everything up on external websites. While those sites are great at what they do, we felt like we needed to try to alleviate the need to go out of the game to find the information players wanted to see.

The addition of Raid Finder in patch 4.3 also opened up more opportunities for players to be able to experience our raid content. The feature has proven to be extremely popular, and not just with people who had given up on raiding. Many players use Raid Finder to gear up their secondary characters, gain Valor for the week, or just because it’s fun.

Q. What do you think worked best?We’ve been reasonably successful with our tuning across all four raid difficulty modes. There were a few warts here and there, but we delivered on the idea that 10-player and 25-player raids could exist at a similar difficulty. We also had some memorable dungeons and cinematic moments in Cataclysm. I’m particularly fond of the interactive bombing run in Grim Batol involving the red drakes. Players really got a sense of the epic scale of Grim Batol, and how well they performed in the event could make clearing the rest of the dungeon much easier.

With our improved tools and the experience we’ve gained over the years, we’ve become better at finding ways to explain the mechanics of our encounters. Our bosses do a better job of warning players of incoming threats. In Dragon Soul we also began to better inform players of mechanics that caused them to die. Providing a better understanding of the encounters to players is an important goal. We feel that losing to a boss and not understanding why is frustrating, just as beating a boss and not understanding why you won is not as satisfying.

Q. What didn’t work out as planned or expected? Initially, we started off the Heroic dungeons at too high of a difficulty. The difficulty level rather abruptly changed when compared to the Heroics players experienced at the end of Wrath of the Lich King. This major change caught many players off guard, and frustrated some of them. The difficulty also increased the effective amount of time required to complete a dungeon to a longer experience than we wanted. With the release of patch 4.3 we’re now in a much better place. We’ve always talked about being able to complete a dungeon over lunch, and the Hour of Twilight dungeons get us back to that goal. End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight all provide epic play experiences to our players, but at the real sweet spot of difficulty, complexity, and time commitment.

Q. Was there anything that surprised you about how players reacted to a particular encounter?Not particularly. Something we’ve learned over the years is to expect the unexpected. The community is very creative and intelligent. The most important thing for us is that players are having fun. They often find interesting ways of approaching things that maybe we didn’t expect, but as long the creative solution is still fun for everyone, we usually don’t have a problem with it.

Q. What have you learned from Cataclysm and what are some of your top goals for Mists of Pandaria?We learned we could create a crazy encounter like the Spine of Deathwing. It took a lot of hard work from the whole team and it was a difficult design challenge to tackle. How do you orchestrate a fight on the back of a gigantic flying dragon without inducing nausea? How do we make sure you feel like you’re on Deathwing? Delivering that experience was really important and everyone wanted the opportunity to work on it. What was really great was that we launched the story of Cataclysm with the cinematic that showed Deathwing having his elementium plates being put on, then we end the expansion with those very same plates being torn off. It gives some real closure to storyline.

Mists of Pandaria, we will continue to provide new dungeons and raids while also presenting interesting new types of content in the form of challenge modes and scenarios. Players will also be introduced to new enemies in the Sha, Mogu, and Mantids. Making those creatures come to life will be a lot of fun.

Q. Do you have a favorite dungeon or encounter from Cataclysm?There are so many. The Conclave of Wind was a great one. Working out interesting mechanics that allowed players to go from platform to platform was a lot of fun and the environment felt really epic. A fight like that was a goal of the encounter team for a very long time.

Blackwing Descent was another favorite and working out the mechanics for the Atramedes fight gave us a lot to think about. How do you create an encounter with a blind dragon that fights? So we gave him sonar and showed the interaction with a sound meter on the player’s UI.

Q. Is there a certain mechanic that you always wanted to do but couldn’t do prior to Cataclysm? Not really. There are so many cool ideas to work with that I never feel held back. It’s easy to be creatively inspired by the people around you and their energy. It’s never a problem of coming up with ideas. It’s usually deciding which ones we want to go with next, but the possibilities are endless.

Q. Do you have a “dream” dungeon or encounter that you’d like to create if you had the opportunity?I’ve never felt that I haven’t been able to do the things I want to do. Everyone on the team is completely dedicated to giving us unlimited opportunities to make epic and awesome experiences. But, if I have to mention something, it would be huge giant death robots. We had Mimiron in Ulduar, but you just can’t have too many death robots.

Comments

Comment by Adamsm

But, if I have to mention something, it would be huge giant death robots. We had Mimiron in Ulduar, but you just can’t have too many death robots.

Lol you know, he's right: We need more death robot fights.

Comment by Rankkor

on 2012-03-05T21:38:59-06:00

interesting

Comment by Interest

on 2012-03-05T21:57:25-06:00

all provide epic play experiences to our players, but at the real sweet spot of difficulty, complexity, and time commitment.

For this part I'm going to partially disagree. Some encounters seem to be a bit undertuned, in my opinion, even when you take ridiculously geared characters into account.

Keep in mind I didn't say all of them were. For instance, most of the End Time encounters are pretty difficult, so to speak, but suddenly Well of Eternity is pretty easy (at least boss 1 and 3). Hour of Twilight's difficulty is more or less all over the place. Arcurion CAN be pretty hard for groups starting out, but Asira Dawnslayer isn't that strong (she just has annoying mechanics) and Benedictus is probably somewhere in the middle (although I really hate it when healers deliberately don't dispel the debuff...but oh well)

But, if I have to mention something, it would be huge giant death robots. We had Mimiron in Ulduar, but you just can’t have too many death robots.

Lol you know, he's right: We need more death robot fights.

I agree. Those have been more or less missing this entire expansion. Maybe we need some throwbacks to good ol' Doomwalker or the Void Reaver (without them becoming loot pinatas, mind you).

Comment by Kanariya

on 2012-03-05T22:05:26-06:00

Initially, we started off the Heroic dungeons at too high of a difficulty.

You mean the perfect amount of difficulty? Hell, they could've been even more difficult. They were actually fun and took time to complete.

End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight all provide epic play experiences to our players, but at the real sweet spot of difficulty, complexity, and time commitment.

Hahahahaha.

Comment by Elirona

on 2012-03-05T22:24:43-06:00

The community is very creative and intelligent.

Lol. Apparently he's never done LFR.

Comment by Interest

on 2012-03-05T22:47:29-06:00

The community is very creative and intelligent.

Lol. Apparently he's never done LFR.

Apparently, he found my Deathwing fight =).

Comment by thaedris20

on 2012-03-05T23:08:24-06:00

But, if I have to mention something, it would be huge giant death robots. We had Mimiron in Ulduar, but you just can’t have too many death robots.

Comment by kickthecat

But, if I have to mention something, it would be huge giant death robots. We had Mimiron in Ulduar, but you just can’t have too many death robots.

Lol you know, he's right: We need more death robot fights.

*Raid enters boss room

"Goliath Online""Thor is HERE!""Battlecruiser operational/Who called in the fleet"

Uh oh, did they bring Starcraft units into Warcraft?

Comment by Adamsm

on 2012-03-06T00:00:32-06:00

But, if I have to mention something, it would be huge giant death robots. We had Mimiron in Ulduar, but you just can’t have too many death robots.

Lol you know, he's right: We need more death robot fights.

*Raid enters boss room

"Goliath Online""Thor is HERE!""Battlecruiser operational/Who called in the fleet"

Uh oh, did they bring Starcraft units into Warcraft?/shrug Already lots of Mechanical enemies all through out Azeroth(including some big ones: All of the Titan Watchers are machine people just like the Titans themselves possibly are); I liked the Mimiron fight and even XT's(even if his voice was annoying). And well...there are 'space ships' in Azeroth as well; the Exodar and it's other three satellites, the Tempest Keep and the sacred mountain of the Orcs in Nagrand(Oshu'gan was how the Draenei ended up on Draenor in the first place); if we end up seeing more Naaru in the future, we'll probably see more of the their Plane Ships as the new recruits arrive.

Comment by Interest

on 2012-03-06T00:02:12-06:00

But, if I have to mention something, it would be huge giant death robots. We had Mimiron in Ulduar, but you just can’t have too many death robots.

Lol you know, he's right: We need more death robot fights.

*Raid enters boss room

"Goliath Online""Thor is HERE!""Battlecruiser operational/Who called in the fleet"

Uh oh, did they bring Starcraft units into Warcraft?

I'd like to see encounters against all of those. Protoss Carriers would be interesting too (I'm ASSUMING they count as mechanical units)

Comment by Keelerak

on 2012-03-06T00:44:15-06:00

just as beating a boss and not understanding why you won is not as satisfying.

NO! Killing something incredibly hard with improvised tactic with 90% party dead are the best kills out there!

Comment by Soldrethar

on 2012-03-06T06:34:59-06:00

Initially, we started off the Heroic dungeons at too high of a difficulty.

You mean the perfect amount of difficulty? Hell, they could've been even more difficult. They were actually fun and took time to complete.

End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight all provide epic play experiences to our players, but at the real sweet spot of difficulty, complexity, and time commitment.

Hahahahaha.

Actually, the heroics were way too hard for new lvl 85s at the start of cataclysm, to the point where so many groups either took forever to finish them or just completely disbanded before they even ended. I remember trying to heal first boss of SFK heroic at the start of cataclysm when my druid hit lvl 85 and it was impossible, he did WAY too much damage for me to heal, especially at the end when he does his aoe ability. And the troll heroics were way worse! I couldn't get a successful troll heroic run for a long time, they all failed at the first boss. The nerfing was needed, and the new 4.3 heroics are the perfect level of difficulty. Heroics should be quick and easy, not extremely long and filled with countless wipes.

Comment by Astygia

on 2012-03-06T07:10:31-06:00

The three raid dungeons came out well and we had a lot of fun bringing the story of Nefarian and the Twilight’s Hammer to life.

Maybe it's just me but I honestly didn't feel like most of the raid content (to include DW himself) was brought to life during this expansion. The encounters were certainly interesting and could be quite hard in their time, and there were pretty cool elements to the story from time to time, but even with all the cutscenes and such, I gotta say at the end of the raids I still feel like I just killed a jumble of bosses for no reason other than to get new purples. I think Cho'gall had the most 'personality' out of all the raid bosses put together, and that wasn't even so much life as it was him just being really messed up.

Can't give an example as to how they coulda done it better, but raid encounters in BC and Wotlk had a more compelling story and a lot more personality put into them.

There were a few warts here and there, but we delivered on the idea that 10-player and 25-player raids could exist at a similar difficulty.

I still think they shouldn't have combined lockouts. Again could be just me and the folks I raid/raided with, but none of us really ever felt like we HAD to run 10 and 25 to keep up with the neighbors- we did what we felt like doing, on the toons we felt like playing, and because the lockouts were not shared there was always something to do. Nowadays you're either doing 10 or 25 so choose carefully. Do not like.

The Zandalari heroics were okay I guess - pretty much every bit of 'this could kill you' in those fights was completely based on mechanics, or the fact that trash hit harder than bosses. They did an okay job turning what were once raids into updated 5mans, but they weren't the best thing ever.

As to the HoT heroics being challenging... like Zandalaris, only if you ignore mechanics. But with less worrisome mechanics. Honestly gearing up a holy pally and blood DK, I had less problems in those (again, while still gearing up, crap gear) than I did in regular heroics, even with everyone else in the group still gearing up as well. Not bad instances, quick 378s in and out in half an hour, and not as faceroll as they were on test realm... but they're certainly not the ICC 5-Mans of this expansion in terms of experience.

Comment by Nagousta

on 2012-03-06T07:49:28-06:00

I've been very satisfied with the difficulty tuning this expansion. The normal mode bosses are interesting without being too punishing, and the step up to heroics isn't too drastic either. For a casual guild doing two nights a week, it's been perfect.

Looking back, I think I'm a bit disappointed with Deathwing's spine encounter. I've obviously looked around a bit during the encounter, and saw that I appear to be on his back. I certainly don't feel like we're actually flying or even moving, I can just see wings and the occasional bit of head. If anything, it just feels like a platform.

The 'nausea' comment is interesting - if I had designed the encounter, I would have maybe had the game's camera moving around a bit, maybe swerving from time to time, to give that sense of actual movement, because as it is, it's just an arena. But they wouldn't have been able to do that, in case folk got travel sick.

In summary, travel sickness is weird.

Comment by rurt

on 2012-03-06T08:22:47-06:00

I disagree with Astygia. Combining 10 and 25 man lockouts was a great idea. Not only did it feel like you *have* to farm both difficulties to get gear quickly enough and not stay behind, but farming, say, ICC10 and 25 (and VOA 10 and 25) was a routine that got on my nerves. A lot. Now imagine how annoying this would be while trying to collect a legendary - like Tarecgosa in Firelands: you get a choice of doing the same raid *twice* each week, most probably going through the pugging hell just to get the group together twice (10 and 25), or lag behind and get raised eyebrows and questioning looks from your peers and officers for not progressing with all due haste on a quest that influences the power of your entire group. Red Queen at its finest.There was the same thing with gearing up in LFR at the start of DS progression, but thanks God it wasn't quite as bad.That's unnecessary and annoying - I joined a 10 (or 25) group, I raid with them, not with pugged random strangers from /2, not with half of my group half of the time. The last step to make now is to separate the Server 1st Feats of Strength, so that no type of group gets an advantage and the competition is fair: 10-man raiders get to compete with 10-man raiders, 25 with 25.

When in comes to 5-mans: maybe the original ones were a tad too hard (seeing how most 5-mans are done with pugs, not full guild groups), but I'd rather have it too hard than too easy. The problem with Zanda hcs was not that they were too hard, or too long, or too difficult or whatever, but rather the fact that for a long time you had to do them over and over and over again, with no good alternative, unless you were in a raid group that had quite a lot of raid bosses on farm. I was, back then, but by far not everyone was so lucky.

The new 5-mans in HoT, conversely, are a bit too simple and too easy. Again - a bit. With the addition of some challenge modes in MoP I would be ok with the 5-mans being about this hard or just slightly harder.

Raid tiers: t11 was the best, followed by Firelands, followed by Dragon Soul. It's not that I'm not enjoying DS - I am - but I think too much stuff here was recycled. I means models especially - after FL, which was full of new looks, we got same old Wyrmrest with Ozruk on steroids, then 2 types of faceless that we've seen before, then 3 more aesthetically boring bosses, then Spine, which is just an add fight. Madness was actually ok - the concept of Deathwing falling apart and trying to bring the world down with him was hammered home nicely. All in all, I think the fights weren't awesome enough for the last tier that ended the expansion - I remember the hectic last seconds on Chimaeron's first kill, or how my heart raced as I followed Alys into the air for the first time, or how Sinestra used to cut us up and burn us down for weeks and weeks on end - DS, so far, hasn't come close.

Regarding bosses/raids and the story - that's rather meh, there were always some filler bosses that were just big guys standing in your way and there were the real anti-heroes who you test yourself against: Arthas, Kael, Kil'Jaeden. Cata had that smug @#$%^&* Nefarian and his damned sis who CAN'T STAY DEAD, had absolutely wonderfully mad Cho'Gall, Sinestra The Raid Slicer, Ragnaros... Not bad at all.

Regarding new content and hopes for the future: I like my raids to be aesthetically pleasing, so all I ask for is more shiny, novel, cool graphic designs after the underwhelming DS experience. More "gimmick" bosses - FL was really, really great for me, with half of the bosses doing something new and interesting. A very hard council fight please (I love council fights!). And in general, since we now have LFR and everyone can finish everything and get their epix for free: make normals harder, much harder than LFR, so people have a reason to raid them still. Don't let us overheal avoidable damage, don't let us cheese the mechanics, don't do EZ-mode bosses like Morchok or Shannox. Make every kill count, like it did in FL pre-nerf.

That's my 2 bits, feel free to agree/disagree.

Comment by KasterOrta

on 2012-03-06T08:24:52-06:00

Initially, we started off the Heroic dungeons at too high of a difficulty. The difficulty level rather abruptly changed when compared to the Heroics players experienced at the end of Wrath of the Lich King.

Personally, I found the difficulty right on par with how HEROICS should be. It brought me back to my days in BC, where heroics could still be considered a challenge even while raiding. As a Holy Paladin going into Cataclysm it brought a new sense of skill requirement. I couldn't just flash spam the tank and be done with it. It involved thinking: Deciding not to heal someone until a certain time, letting one of the dps die so I could keep everyone else alive. In short, it felt right.

Comment by Teddiursa

on 2012-03-06T10:16:13-06:00

"Basically we don't think we did anything wrong at all in terms of dungeons & raids this expansion other than things being too difficult for a little while at release."

Wtf?

Comment by lankybrit

on 2012-03-06T10:23:46-06:00

Initially, we started off the Heroic dungeons at too high of a difficulty.

You mean the perfect amount of difficulty? Hell, they could've been even more difficult. They were actually fun and took time to complete.

End Time, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight all provide epic play experiences to our players, but at the real sweet spot of difficulty, complexity, and time commitment.

Hahahahaha.

Different people have different opinions. The HoT Heroics are just right for me. Very challenging when I first did them, and now on farming. IMHO the Cata Heroics were slightly too difficult, and definitely too long. You don't want to be spending an hour on one Heroic.

Cheers.

Comment by Adamsm

on 2012-03-06T10:55:35-06:00

In regards to the new spectral mounts that have a different style for each faction.....think Blizzard is looking to add in a new piece of content for the lull heh.

Comment by jellybsly55

on 2012-03-06T11:16:50-06:00

just my brain thinking but i didn't find the heroics to hard tbh. I started playing in Cata so didn't have any characters but i learned my class and i did around 10K dps and with some better geared players (not that highly geared that i get carried) i enjoyed it way more then i enjoy the new HoT's.I wiped a ton on deadmines but i learned from it step by step which made me a better player then just by going into a normal dungeon where everything is just too easy.Heroic mode should be heroic.